Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Kucinich to promote health care @ Gtown/DC

Our neighbor's daughter goes to Georgetown University-Washington DC and just received this email, which she forwarded to us. Why is he spending time speaking with students @ Gtown instead of addressing us, here in Ohio?

Based on the zip code of your home, it appears that you are either a constituent of (or near since some zip codes are shared by multiple Congressional districts, live near the district of) Congressman Dennis Kucinich, I wanted to make sure you were aware that he is speaking here on campus at the invitation of the group,Georgetown Solidarity Committee.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Universal Health Care: Keeping a Public Option on the Table

Wednesday September 23

White-Gravenor 201 A

8:00-9:30 p.m.

Below is the description from Georgetown Solidarity Committee about the Congressman's talk:

Representative Dennis Kucinich will be speaking on the subject of /Universal HealthCare:

Keeping a Public Option on the Table/. Mr. Kucinich (D-OH) has twice run for U.S. President, both times citing universal health careas the preeminent issue motivating his campaigns, saying, "no injustice is greater in this country than the fact that 30 million people go without health insurance in this, the richest nation in the world." As one of the most vocal advocates for publicly-financed health care, he is currently galvanizing support on Capitol Hill for an amendment to House Resolution 3600. If it passes, this resolution would allow for individual states to adopt single-payer health care systems if they so choose.

The address will be an overview of the health care debate from Mr. Kucinich's perspective as well as a legislative update on his amendment (which currently has 86 cosponsors). He will speak for 30-40 minutes to be followed by a question/answer session.

Over 80 members of the Georgetown community gathered in White-Gravenor Hall on Wednesday evening to listen to Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) speak about single-payer health care plans.

The Georgetown Solidarity Committee arranged for Kucinich to discuss the single-payer system and hold a dialogue about health care reform.

The GSC chose Kucinich to address the solutions to health insurance problems that members of the workforce face. The committee’s mission is to support workers’ rights campaigns.

“We chose to bring in Dennis Kucinich because he is the most vocal advocate for creating a single-payer system,” said Robert Byrne (COL ’11), a member of GSC, in an e-mail. “We also chose him because whether you agree with him or not, I think Rep. Kucinich was fantastic at working the room without ‘being a politician.’”

Kucinich delivered a 10-minute speech about the current state of health care and the United States National Health Care Act, a single-payer plan he co-wrote with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Kucinich spent the rest of the hour answering questions from the audience, sometimes with in-depth answers and others with a brief “yes” or “no.”

Throughout the dialogue, Kucinich identified the influence of private insurance companies as a source of trouble.

“Every other country in the world has a health care system that takes care of its people,” Kucinich said. “Ours protects the insurance companies.”

Kucinich said that enough profit exists in private health care that, if reallocated, could support a public option that covers everyone with a minimal tax increase.

“This really is a moral issue,” Kucinich said. “… The public option is absolutely going to happen.

His public-option plan would mandate personal health insurance for everyone and fiscally penalize those who refuse it.

“[Quality control] boards will check statistics and rates of how the system is working and provide a strong oversight component,” Kucinich said.

In addition to public policy, Kucinich spoke about the need for personal responsibility and explained that he has modified his own lifestyle to be healthier by becoming a vegan and making healthy decisions on a daily basis.“We need a movement behind the single-payer option,” Kucinich said. “It’s time to put a real value on the lives of our citizens.”

As he outlined his plan, Kucinich answered questions from the audience relating to the constitutionality of mandated health care, to the feasibility of covering health care costs for illegal immigrants and Congress’ incremental approach to health care reformJohn Lodato (COL ’13) said that he was impressed by the mix of supporters and opponents of public health-care. Despite the mixed views, Lodato said the audience was attentive.

“[The audience] wasn’t like the town halls you see on TV where everyone is yelling,” Lodato said.